


Once In a While

by galacticproportions



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, F/M, Grief/Mourning, How Aunt May Got Her Groove Back, Older Woman/Younger Man, Soul-Searching, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 13:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: Just when May Parker thought that the era of spider-people showing up at her door was over...





	Once In a While

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts), [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts).



> Gloss supplied the pairing that made this a story instead of a sketch and brought out themes and emotions I couldn't have found otherwise. As is often the case, you're reading this because of her. She and orchis also supplied enthusiasm and encouragement. Thank you, my dears.
> 
> My knowledge of Miguel O'Hara comes from an extremely cursory and cherry-picking readthrough of the Spiderman 2099 wiki.
> 
> The title of this story is obviously not proprietary (sorry, I don't know why I think that's so funny), but in choosing it I was thinking both of May's line about getting out of the house and of the Benders song that goes _You should stop by, baby, once in a while._

When they were working to improve the web fluid, one of the test versions dried too fast and rigid to be any good in the shooters. But it works like a dream on broken glass and china. May sits up late these nights with her mother's good teacups, fitting ferns to ferns and roses to roses, until she's tired enough to sleep.

“You here to help me with that Tinder profile?” she says to Miles when he shows up on a Saturday afternoon.

He blinks. “Yeah, no, I—yes? If you want me to?”

“I'm just giving you a hard time, kiddo,” she says. “You want in? You're not with your family today?” She knows a little about Brooklyn Visions Academy—one of their patents funds about a third of a lab there.

He shrugs. “Dad's a cop and mom's an oncology nurse. They don't really get, like, weekends.”

“That's tougher on you, then, being away from home.”

He nods. A less loved kid would have shrugged again. “What's up?” she asks him. “You came here for a reason.”

“Yeah. It's the web goobers.”

“Shooters,” she corrects him. “Goobers are whatever little thing you need to save the world. You running out of juice?”

“Yeah, kinda. I swung up to Harlem 'cause one of the kids in my physics class, her family has landlord problems, and then on the way back I maybe took a little detour--” He's probably trying for shamefaced or contrite, but his cheeks keep trying to grin, his head almost floating.

She remembers Peter like this, in that brief, bright window between struggling to accept his powers and feeling them as a heavy weight. “So you need a refill.”

“I kinda wanna know how to make it.”

Of course he does. The web fluid isn't, as Liv would say in her obnoxious way, proprietary, but they don't spread the formula around. Reverse engineering it doesn't work because the composition changes and denatures as it dries. With the exception of the benevolent blackmail in polymer that they've been collecting for about eight years, from her old boss across the river at DuPont, the ingredients are common at any supply house. Miles could probably grab most of them if he went a little early to chemistry class.

But the procedure needs equipment that you don't find in most Brooklyn basements, or most sheds in Queens for that matter

“Come on down,” she says. “I'll get you set up.”

There's plenty left of the good stuff, still. She'd been wondering—before all this dimensional nonsense—what on earth she was going to do with it. Sure, anyone can wear the mask, but she's a little old to be jumping from buildings and bouncing off moving cars.

She gets Miles an apron and gloves and goggles and a respirator. Swamped by Peter's adult-size protective gear, he looks about eight years old. “Watch me do one,” she says. “The timing's important, and you gotta do it by hand.” The smell of melting plastic and maple syrup wafts through the underground chamber, past the suits and the Spider-Mobile. “Now we add the anticoagulant, as soon as it turns opaque—see that? And once that's incorporated we run the current through it, like  _ so. _ ”

They decant one batch and set it aside, and May stands away from the equipment for him to make another. His first attempt curdles, and she can't help laughing: even behind the goggles she can see his crestfallen expression. “I still have to throw out a batch sometimes,” she assures him. “And once Peter had to throw out the whole bin, 'cause he couldn't get it to unstick no matter what he tried.”

She says it almost without thinking—it's just a story about Peter, the kind she would've passed on to MJ when he was alive, and they'd have laughed about it together while he pretended to sulk. But Miles stills for a second within all his brimming and fidgety motion, and he says quietly, “I'm sorry.”

They ride back up the elevator with Miles's shooters refilled, along with two old cooking-oil containers of web fluid and the silicone pipettes that they found work best for the transfer. “You want a snack?”

He looks tempted—kids this age need to eat about every seven minutes, she remembers—but shakes his head. “Homework.”

May plucks a pear off the backyard tree that was there when she and Ben moved in.“These are pretty good,” she says, and tosses it deliberately wide. Miles flings out an arm, but the strand of web goes even wider. “Damn,” he says, double tapping to let it drool down the back of the house and eyeing the now-splatted pear with chagrin.

“Practice,” she suggests. “It's good if you can hit something smaller than a building.”

“Great, more homework,” he says, but he's grinning again. She grabs him another pear, handing it to him this time.

She takes a stab at the dating profile herself, clicking boxes, chewing hard on the cap of the plastic ballpoint with her dentist's name on it even though she's in front of a computer screen. Old habits die hard, if they don't kill you first. Types  _ friendship and maybe more, _ makes a face at the coyness, deletes  _ more  _ and writes  _ sex _ , makes another face just because. Deletes the whole phrase. Starts again.

In October, May goes on a couple dates with a trauma nurse from Staten Island, figuring that he’ll recognize and understand the arrhythmia of terror and boredom that the years built up in her. He does, but he takes himself too seriously. The other two she tries don’t even make it past the first date--the Parks Department guy smells funny, and she suspects the retired biochemist of wanting to be evil but not being conversant enough with the state of the field to get that far.

Once, over lasagna, MJ suggests that they should double-date. She holds the earnest expression for nearly half a minute before both of them collapse in helpless, snorting, fork-dropping laughter.

“I sorta wish somebody else would do it,” Miles says to her a few days later, around what’s left of the lasagna. His dad’s at a conference, his mom’s working a double, and he already ate everything in the fridge and spent his allowance on Takis and individually shrink-wrapped pickles.

She narrows her eyes at him. “You getting tired?”

“No! I mean. It was just, like, when there were a bunch of us. Even with two of us, with--” He stops, and she knows why. It’s an admittedly small sample size, this is only his third time at the house, but he’s never finished a sentence about her nephew  _ or _ Peter B. in front of her. “It wasn’t even easier, but it was better. And it was fun. I mean everybody was trying to kill us, but--”

“But it was fun.”

“It was! Also, like. What if I’m wearing the mask and I come around a corner and there’s a guy webbed to a lamppost, and I get to be like,  _ Wasn’t me _ .” He does an exaggerated “wasn’t me” shrug and May laughs, like she’s supposed to.

She keeps an eye out. She always has. There were things that Peter didn’t trouble her with, so she had to find them out in other ways, and the internet makes it easy. There are whole Instagram accounts devoted to spider-spotting, but Miles--unless someone’s imitating him right down to the spray-painted drips on the suit--is the only one she ever sees.

The other problem is that anyone can wear a mask, but not everyone can get bitten by a radioactive spider--or pig, or whatever. You can be a hero without superpowers, but you can’t be a  _ super _ hero.

That evening, after Miles has sloped away with a refill batch of web fluid made with his very own hands, she wonders about it, all of it--the dimensional gateway, the atomic instability. She knows Miles still talks with Gwen, but that pathway only seems to let information through. They’ve tried small objects, he told her; everything just falls through into the same room as the person holding it, except for rubber bands, which explode.

Getting the collider up and running again would require negotiating with Liv, which is something that May has no desire to do, not for Miles, not for anybody. Anyway, it was trashed in the fight. And anyway again, none of them can stay for long in a dimension not their own.

And even more anyway, it doesn’t do a person any good to start wondering about other universes, because then you start thinking about the universe where Peter’s alive but his Aunt May is dead, and wondering if there might be a place for you there, and then you start wondering about the universe where Ben never died, and where Peter never became a hero, and where everybody just--

\--May snorts, and brushes her hands together, and throws a cup of Lipton’s in the microwave.

The next couple weeks are low-key. It’s a gray, drizzly, mildew-y fall. May does a little desultory prodding at some articles by one of Liv’s professional rivals, from Moldovia or someplace; goes to aerobics with her old friend Sheila, who's moved back to Queens to take care of her mother; winterizes the house, even though it’s not really cold yet. And she scans the spider-’grams and the “urban exploration” accounts and even the police blotters, though she draws the line at the  _ Post _ . Someone puts up a great little video of Miles webbing a subway manspreader’s knees together, and another, less flattering one of him sheepishly fishing out of the East River the toaster-oven he threw there because (he indignantly told the crowd) he thought it was an IED. May's pleased to see that the webs still work pretty well even when they get wet.

And then, one day, something different.

At first she thinks it’s just Miles, but even crawlwaller42’s phone footage in gray New York light shows that this is a grown man, and under the new LED streetlight the suit is very clearly blue and red, not black and red. A pattern she’s never seen, on a person who moves like...a spider. Like Spider-Man.

The video has over a thousand comments already: shrill questions, conspiracy theories, contemptuous scoffing... May closes her laptop and puts on her coat and takes a walk around the block to clear her head, getting in a couple good scratches on Mrs. Lieberman’s dog’s ears when they pass each other. The fur on Sammy the terrier's head is damp with fog, his little skull solid and reassuring.

Did someone else, somehow, get bitten? Maybe by the spider that bit Miles? Or maybe there are just radioactive spiders breeding uptown now? Did  _ Miles  _ figure something out? Does he know about New Blue Spider-Man? Did he  _ call  _ him, did one of the others  _ send  _ him? Is the gateway, or  _ some  _ gateway, open again? The questions chase each other around May's head until it aches.

A few days later, New Blue Spider-Man shows up again, this time in a still shot from a pretty good camera. He's clinging crouched to the side of of a high wall, tensed for the next leap. May Parker has grown accustomed over the years to all the things that synthetic materials, from Spandex to Kevlar to semintelligent nanofabrics so secret they don't have a brand name, reveal about the human form. This guy's ass is  _ fantastic. _

Pretty soon all kinds of news sites are using the shot, same picture with different breathless headlines, including a few that echo May's own evaluation. That lasts for a few days until it's bumped by a blurry video of two figures swinging in counterpoint through the financial district. That answers that question. She wonders how they found each other, what they found to do down there, to what extent this is or isn't her business anymore.

But she's not even surprised, really, when they come to the door that Saturday, suited up and masked, New Blue Spider-Man holding himself back a little, stocky and wary. “What kind of a place do you think I'm running here,” she says to Miles, who looks like a greyhound with one end of a boxer's leash in its mouth.

“Ms. Parker's Home for Lost Arachnids?”

Obviously he was saving that one up, maybe for days. “Come on in,” she says. She wants to know more about this other guy anyway.

Miles doffs the mask and shoves it in his pocket, miming to the stranger to do the same with a squeeze-and-pull gesture above his head. He hesitates, but follows suit, as it were.

The word that blinks bright as neon into May's mind is  _ trouble. _

He looks like the boys from the neighborhood that moms and aunts used to warn older girls about: jawline, head-tilt, a challenge in his long-lashed eyes. Six-year-old May would press her palm to the points of the railings, jumprope or comic book forgotten, and watch them saunter by in the late summer afternoon on their way to who knows where, watch her cousins come out with white lipstick and ratted-up hair to sneak a cigarette with them. She can smell in memory the Marlboros and Virginia Slims, the cocktail of hair products, Babe bath powder and nervous sweat and the mild cat-piss scent of box hedges with the sun on them.

He's older than those boys were then, mid-thirties maybe, they all look young to her now. “May Parker,” she says, holding out her hand.

“Miguel O'Hara. I'd shake, but--” He spreads his fingers, showing claws.

“Nice,” she says. “We thought of that but we couldn't get the reinforcement on the insets right. What'd you use?” There's something on his wrist, too, something bulky yet slick like one of those eerie new step-counters Sheila swears by. She'd like a closer look. At the tech, and also—

He looks confused, eyes slewing sideways, and she calls out to Miles, who's investigating the kitchen, “Did you explain who I am? Why you were bringing him here?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, yeah.”

“Actually, maybe you could explain that second one to me, too. Bring that box in here. And a plate.”

Over granola bars (chocolate chip), it's Miguel who explains first: the thing on his wrist enables him to cross between dimensions without glitching and without—as far as they can tell—hazardous expenditure of energy. “Best I can describe it is it's an aligner, not a collider like what Alchemax was using here.”

“Not my field,” May says. “I've been trying to catch up a little, but it's a rough ride.”

“Mine either, I'm a genetics guy. My collaborator Lyla is a computer, and she did the real work.”

Miles chimes in, “Like if the particles are beans in a bag, and you shake it up, normally they just go wherever. But the goober lines up the waveforms of the ones that add up to the dimension you want, and you just follow that to where you're going.”

“We got Alchemax too, in Nueva York,” Miguel adds. “They always do everything the most aggro way possible. Lyla and I came up with this instead. Funny thing, though, it seems like so far it only lets you go to universes where there's already spider...people, or there have been.”

“Something about resonance maybe,” Miles offers, and they're off again, pleased with themselves and each other. Miles seems to be having the effect that he usually does have on people: the wariness in Miguel's posture when they both arrived seems to have unspooled into enthusiasm and animation, and he's leaning into the conversation, hypothesizing about charm quarks and particle chains.

Not her field, but she can follow some of it, and she appreciates that every so often Miguel catches her eye to include her in what they're talking about and the good time they're having. When she asks what he's hoping to do as he dimension-hops, what they were going for, he turns his whole body toward her.  _ Charm quarks,  _ May thinks, and if she were a giggler, she might giggle now. “But why bother with it at all?” she asks. “I'm guessing you all have plenty to deal with in your own—what are we calling them? Universes? Dimensions?”

“More than plenty.” His jaw—it  _ is  _ a nice jaw—tightens briefly. “But that's why. What if we could call on each other for backup? One of us runs into something they can't handle, be nice if we could get ahold of someone else. Or just shoot the shit. Trade spider-tips. Not be the only one.”

“How well does it work?”

“We're still using a time limit on it in case I do start glitching out. Building up to longer stints. Also I don't have a place to sleep in any of these universes.” His smile curls. “But so far it's working. Long enough to have a fight anyway—I helped Lady Spider break people out of a human trafficking convoy a couple universes over.”

Miles's eyes are as wide as the mended saucers in the china cabinet, at least until he catches her looking at him. “Now I'm here,” Miguel adds, distributing the closed-mouth smile again between the two of them. “Miles has been showing me around.”

“So I'm a stop on the tour?” she says, and it comes out a little sharper than she wanted.

“Major New York attraction,” he agrees readily, and she's so taken aback that it gives time for Miles to give Miguel a weird look and to say, “You're part of the team. Sorta. I thought you should know each other.”

This warms her heart, sure, but it also does something else to her heart, activates something like a tangle of wires that she'd been trying not to look at or do much about, and it sits heavier in her chest each minute until they leave. Miguel has to get back to his own dimension, and Miles has to get home for dinner.

May's ability to compartmentalize and subdivide has firmed up with each passing year, and she's able to genuinely listen to her friend Lorraine complain about her sister's latest multi-level marketing scam and brag about her nieces while her own insides are simultaneously working on the tangle. By the time she's walking home, saying hi to Mrs. Chung and squatting to let Sweetie the Shih Tzu/bath mat mix snort furiously and lick her hand, she's able to at least find one end of it. After the gateway closed and everyone went home, she wasn't Spider-Man's Aunt May anymore, much less the universal aunt that she briefly became when she had six superheroes to deal with instead of one. She was May Parker, grieving for her nephew every day, and living her life. And as much as she bitterly hated the first part, there was something about the second part that felt different and new. Maybe hopeful, maybe bleak, but hers.

And then Miles showed up. And she had things he could use—tools and knowledge and expertise—that it would have been a shame to withhold. And she'd gotten to care about him. And now there’s this guy.

While they were hashing things out in her living room, Miles (with a glance at her) had floated the idea that maybe the resonance or the pattern matching or whatever it was had happened because (another glance) during the fight that (a pause) broke up the collider the first time, Spider-Man's face and head had crossed into the particle beam and “taught” it something about what to look for. But whether or not that’s why there are now spider-specific pathways through the multiverse--why does it have to sound so silly to talk about?--it seems like she’s back at their crossroads, and she isn’t at all sure she wants to be there, smile or no smile.

May makes a point, that week, of staying away from the spider-spotting blogs and even the Metro section. She cleans the bathroom, the oven, and the lab equipment, and starts the book they made that movie out of, about the Black women who did the math for the Apollo program. “Computers,” they called themselves, or at least their jobs. ( _ My collaborator Lyla is a computer, _ she hears in Miguel’s voice--she’s pretty sure that’s not what he meant, but maybe that word means something different where he’s from, held onto its old meaning. He looked unhappy when he mentioned his universe. She wonders what it’s--)

“No,” May says out loud to the living room, to the lamps and the couch and the chairs and the china cabinet, to the photos of Peter and MJ and Ben and of her with Sheila and Lorraine on the Staten Island ferry and of a cityscape that Peter took when he was still taking pictures. “I won’t. I will not. I don’t have to.”

But does she want to, is the question. Is she there at the crossroads because she wants to be, is the question.

The weekend comes around again. “Do you know if, uh,” Miles says, and stops. May waits. “If these powers ever come with super hearing.”

“Peter didn’t have that,” May says, mostly just to show them both she can do it without flinching. “I don’t know what spiders can hear, really. Does Miguel have it?” May Parker, she scolds herself, listen to you, dragging him in like you’re in the junior high cafeteria.

Miles lights up. “I dunno. But you know what he can do? He can sense electromagnetic fields. Come on! Killer sense of direction! Detecting superweapons! He says it even helps him jump.”

Better steer things back out of Miguel O’Hara Fan Club territory. “Can you do that?”

Slight deflation. “I don’t think so.”

“Why do you want super hearing?”

He frowns and twists the grape stem. “I just feel like a lot of the bad things that happen in this city start with people talking,” he says. “Talking in places that are hard to get into. Maybe if I could hear through a wall, I could get a little heads up. Like an exterior wall.”

She hopes Rio and Jefferson really do know what a good kid they have. It seems like they do. “There might be a technological fix for this,” she says. “Some kind of earpiece in the suit. I only know the basics, though. How are you with circuits?”

“Not great, but Randy is, my roommate, and actually you know who else is is this kid Tatiana on my block who DJs and builds synthesizers. Lemme see if her cousin has her number.” Out comes the phone. He swings so sharply, so gracefully, from frustration to hope, from the drop to the rise.

“How is it, working with Miguel?” she asks while he’s waiting for an answer and futzing with the grape stem again. “You said you were missing it, having another person around.” So much for not dragging him in.

“It’s okay. It’s good. He’s good. He’s...kind of a downer, but he’s good to fight with, and swing with.”

“A downer how?”

“I think his universe is kinda grimy. Oh, here’s Jay. He says he doesn’t give out her number but if I want to come play Space Jam 3030 Full Court Press they’re playing at his house tonight.” He groans. “How come nobody but me has homework?”

“Maybe they just aren’t doing it,” May offers. “Or, anyway, they’re probably not doing it and doing spider-things at the same time.”

“I’m not even doing that many because I have so much  _ homework _ . Plus it’s been quiet, not a lot of super...stuff. But Miguel’s back in New York this week, we're gonna meet up here.” He gives a textbook impression of a person who’s about to say something, and then says it in a rush: “He wants to know if I wanna try the goober.”

She can’t help herself, or anyway, she doesn’t: “And go to the grimy dimension?”

“I was thinking I’d go see Gwen. Or any of ‘em. If we could get it to work.”

“Miles,” she says, “have you told your parents yet?”

He slump-slouches forward, nose pointed at the table and chin stuck out. “I knew you were gonna say that. I knew it.”

“Okay, so you knew it. So I don’t need to say the rest of it, right?”

“‘Miles, don’t go to other dimensions without your parents’ permission.’”

“Not permission,” May says. “You have responsibilities, just like they do, and they don’t ask your permission for theirs. But you know what theirs are. That’s all I’m saying.”

He turns his face up again. “When did Peter tell you?”

“After the first time he almost died,” she says: a big gun, but also the truth. “I’m just saying, maybe don’t wait that long.”

There's a knock, then. “That's probably Miguel for me okay gotta go,” Miles says, and he opens the door just as Miguel does. They do a little comic two-step in the doorway that leaves May hiding a smile as she says, “Go fight crime or something.”

“We're stopping for burgers first,” Miguel says, and does the head-tilt. “You wanna come?”

“No thanks,” May says, from some combination of wanting to let them have their time, not really liking burgers, and not wanting to feel like Miles is the third wheel on a vehicle that might not even really be a collection of parts. Even if this is all in her head, that's not a fair position for her head to put him in.

“What about a walk?”

“What, to the subway?”

May also knows what textiles do when the person underneath them is smiling. “If you want. But I meant, just around. After we fight some crime. I can come back up here.”

“Sure,” May's mouth says without any input from her judgment. “Sounds good. I'll be back here around seven.” She, Sheila, Sheila's mother and Sheila's mother's best friend Pamela have a plan to play gin, with the two younger women holding the cards for the elder.

She and Pamela lose $5.63 to Sheila and Kathy, and she doesn't tell them about her upcoming evening. Now that there's a plan—she doesn't want to call it a date—her impulse to bring him into the conversation has dried up, leaving even her tongue feeling fragile.

When Miguel shows up for their walk, he's unmasked, with a wool coat and thick leather gloves—where did he get them?--but no hat. She fetches a knit one out of the miscellaneous outerwear basket for him, Peter's or hers or even Ben's, who knows. “Is it winter there too?” She's talking about the weather, but screw it, the weather is there to be talked about.

“More or less,” he says. They walk on, and the silence isn't bad. It's late for this neighborhood. “Not as cold as this.”

“There should be snow, this time of year.”

“It doesn't snow at all in Nueva York,” he says. “Hasn't since before I was born.”

“Tell me what it's like there.” He does. It sounds pretty terrible, but mostly she's just  _ aware  _ of him, his voice, how far or how close their swinging arms are. The streetlights are haloed. Something catches her eye, bright on one of the lampposts: “Look!” she says. “It's one of Miles's stickers,” and they both laugh, sharing their fondness for him.

“He's a good kid,” Miguel says. “Better than I was.”

“He's got a lot of love, I think.”

Miguel slants an eyebrow upward at her. “In his heart?”

_ Oh, get over yourself,  _ May thinks, but she says, “That too, but I meant in his life.”

He's quiet for a few strides. “Yeah,” he says. “That makes it easier.”

They pass Mrs. Chung and Mrs. Lieberman, who have started walking their dogs together. May waves, and he asks who they are, and she tells him. They move like that, talking about things that matter and things that don't, and things that seem like they don't but maybe (quietly, secretly) do, until back at her door she says, “You want to come in for a minute?”

He pauses, then nods and follows her inside. “Take your things off,” she says. “Stay a while.” He doesn't move, and her gut sinks, compelling her to add, “Only if you want to.”

“It's not that.”

She waits.

He peels the gloves off and flexes his fingers like he did on the day she met him.

“They're not in the suit,” he says. “They're just my hands. How my hands are now.” He bares his teeth, not a smile at all. “I got poison fangs, too.”

She lifts her eyes, meets his gaze coolly. “They grow in like that? The claws?”

He blinks, the grimace falling away into plain surprise. “Yeah.”

“Do they help your grip? How do you keep 'em sharp?”

“File 'em.” He still looks a little pole-axed. It's cute on him. “You're being really...I'm looking for a word here...not weirded out about this.”

“A few months ago I was hosting a pig who keeps anvils in his pockets,” she reminds him. “I raised a kid who stuck to the ceiling and punched juiced-up green captains of industry. This is not that weird to me.”

“I wish my mom had been like you,” he says unexpectedly. “I wish she was like you now.”

That's not exactly what May wants to hear under the circumstances, and it bites sour under her diaphragm. But she swallows that down and asks, “She's not into the whole Spider-Man...thing?”

“No. I mean, no but yeah, she actually likes Spider-Man. I'm the one she has a problem with.”

“You!” May says involuntarily. “What's wrong with you?”

“You want the list? I got it memorized.”

“No,” she says. “I don't want the list.” What she wants is to reach up, pull him close and kiss him. It's not at all clear to her that it would be a good move, especially after the mom thing, and she doesn't think she can stand for him to push her away. But-- “Come here,” she says, and puts her arms around him.

He freezes for a second then sinks toward her, lowering his head, his curls against her temple. Thick wool and down between them, but she can feel the shape of him, his muscle and his warmth.

May tries to send comfort to him through the layers. By the time she realizes it's changing, it already has: he's leaning back from her a little, reaching, tilting her chin up.

“Poison fangs?” she asks faintly, with the last trailing end of her common sense.

“It's only if I bite you on purpose,” he says.

“And you're not going to.”

“No, I'm not.”

They kiss for a long time, long enough for May's hands to be shaking when she pulls away from him and says, “No more tonight.”

“Okay,” he says, stepping back. Major, major points for not arguing, but she still keeps talking as if he had, a vestige from her girlhood maybe: “I need to think, and I need to do it by myself.”

“Okay, May.” He leans forward to kiss her cheek. “It might be a few days, there's some stuff back home I probably need to pay attention to.”

_ But you'll come back,  _ she doesn't say, and then he smiles—a real one this time, just the tips of the fangs showing—and says, “See you soon. Thanks for the hat.”

At first, she really does do the kind of thinking she meant. Her life is beginning to flow again, even with Peter's death lodged in it like a bus in a river. And she’d  _ just  _ been saying she wanted that, didn’t want to be simultaneously so entangled and so secondary to a superhero with an inflamed conscience and a smart mouth. And even if she was up for that again, wouldn’t one be plenty? Who needs two?

She's met him all of twice. And she doesn't really trust that he wants her. She's not  _ old  _ old, but she's...older. Older than he is and also, a little bit old. She knows what her body looks like, she knows those things matter to people.

But he kissed her like he wanted her.

She sighs and gives herself up to the other kind of thinking. The taste of him, his hand on the back of her neck—apparently he can fold the claws in if he concentrates, and that makes her think more about his hands, and his concentration. She touches herself, the way she hasn't in months, hasn't wanted to, wants to now.

It would be a lie to say that after the few days he mentioned, she doesn't start wondering. But she's got a lot to do—Sheila's mother has a second stroke, and May and their other friends have to rally around. The students she tutors in chemistry start panicking about their midyear exams. Rumors have started drifting around of a superpowered wrongdoer in gold and green, maybe one of Fisk's hitters who escaped the net, maybe someone new, and Miles is swinging around trying to figure things out.

It would also be a lie to say that on the second day she hadn't stopped off at a Duane Reade to lay in some supplies, just in case.

When Miguel finally shows up, he's wearing the suit, and he limps through the door. “Jesus,” she says, and then old protocols take over. “Okay. Anything broken?”

“I don't think so.”

“Bleeding?” If it's anything like Peter's suits, it breathes okay, but liquids take a while to get through.

“I don't think so. Just—” His hand hovers near his hip and side. “Feels like I got hit by a train.”

She takes the mask off for him and lays it aside. His eyes look naked and tired. “There's first aid stuff in the bathroom,” she says. “You wanna do it or you want me to do it?”

He sounds young, younger than he is, when he says, “Can you do it?”

So she leads him into the bathroom, and he strips down out of the suit and his undershirt. She looks him over, tells him to turn, swipes him with peroxide and arnica. Nothing's bulging out or crushed in, nothing looks worse than the beginnings of bad bruises, but: “I'm not a nurse,” May tells him. “You probably should get someone to look at you who knows what they're doing.”

“I want you to look at me,” he says, and his tone has shifted, tilted.

She does, but it's more of an incredulous stare. “You're kidding. You got the crap kicked out of you!” But he's already crossed over in her consciousness from “injured kid” to “mostly naked man,” and her eyes are drawn to the rise of his neck from his shoulders, the few hairs at his nipples, the goosebumps over the muscles in his forearms, his face turned intent.

“Did you think about it?” he asks.

“Think about--”

“You said you needed to think. Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Come with me,” she says.

In her bedroom, they face each other, he in his briefs, she in jeans and socks and the sweatshirt that Cal Tech gave Peter when they were trying to lure him out west. No bra, because she's been in her house, in her living room, having a peaceful night alone.  _ I'm too old to be shy about this,  _ she thinks, and takes his chin in her hand the way he did to her the other night.

The kisses are even better than they were then.

There's no graceful way to get a crewneck sweatshirt over your head, so she steps back to do it, and undoes her jeans. She hesitates then, and he gathers her in again, claws resting on the skin of her lower back, their sharpness just a suggestion. “Tell me what you like,” he says.

There's a lot she knows about what she likes, but she's not sure she can tell him. Culture, generation, inclination, whatever you want to blame it on. Over the years, she and Ben built up a vocabulary of pressure and touch, attention and response, that richly rewarded and even surprised them both without ever having to say much. With the few men before and the few men since, she took pot luck.

Weirdly, she thinks about Mrs. Lieberman and Mrs. Chung, walking Sammy and Sweetie together with about six shared words between them. Knocking on the door, coming out to the front walk, falling into step. If they can do that, she can do this.

“Here,” she says, showing him. “Put your mouth here.”

A few minutes of his mouth at her breast and her head is light, her knees weak. “Hey,” he says, “I don’t mind holding you up, but the bed’s right there.”

She doesn’t mind being held up, either, but she wants more contact and the bed seems like the best way to get it. Miguel kisses all along the middle of her body, wrinkled and softened places she thought would bother him--why? She can’t remember now. He looks up every so often to catch her eye, checking, and whatever face she’s making must read as an all-clear to him because the next thing he does is dive down and lick her until she feels like she’s turning inside out.

He stops before she wants him to, and lifts his head, and grins. “What’s next?” he says.

“Why, you bored?” She’s never been like this in bed, she’s pretty sure. Something about him brings it out.

“I could do that all night,” he says seriously. “That’s why I’m asking. Up to me, I’d just hang out here. But I want to do what you want.”

“I want you inside me,” she says, and the flush comes up hot and blotchy on her chest and neck. She adds quickly, “There’s condoms in that bag on the nightstand.” Back in the technical, the practical, the necessary, she feels surer of her ground.

“Cool,” he says, and helps her sit up as he reaches and rummages around, pretty deftly considering the claws. He lifts out the tube of lubricant first, and does the eyebrow thing.

“Sometimes at my advanced age you need a little extra,” she says steadily.

“Oh, right,” he says, and before she has time to wonder about that he goes on, “I thought maybe you had some plans for me.”

That hadn't occurred to her, but she remembers now that Ben used to like it sometimes. And Miguel's ass was the first thing she noticed about him, before she saw his face or heard his voice. She says, “I could make some plans.”

So that's how they end up with him inside her  _ and  _ her inside him, with him clenching and arching and crying out, with him easing away from her and licking her again until she can no longer contain herself.

“Can I stay tonight?” he asks her, when they're both breathing and looking at the ceiling.

“Sure,” she says. “No place to sleep, right?”

“That's not why.” He rolls on his side to look at her. “May, that's not why. Can you cut that out? I want to stay. If you want me to.”

“Okay,” she says, and scooches toward him, puts an arm around him, breathes him in.

In the morning, she leaves him dozing to make coffee and think about the night. Strangely, the doubts she had are settling: when she woke up and felt his weight on the mattress, listened to his rumpled breathing, she felt right and easy, like she can stop testing him, like the answers she wants will come in time. Like if he wants to stay not because he’s Spider-Man but because he’s him and she’s her, maybe she’s okay with him leaving and coming back.

When Miguel wanders into the kitchen, she's doing last week's Friday puzzle. She stretches up for his kiss on the top of her head.

“I'm sorry I can't be here all the time,” he says when they've finished breakfast and he's suited up to leave. “I mean, here in this universe.”

“I don't want you here all the time,” she retorts. “I have things to do.” In fact, she promised to get groceries for Sheila and her mother as well as herself (and Miles), and there's a new paper on graphene she wants to read with a mug of tea in hand. Tomorrow's her day to borrow Lorraine's station wagon, drive across the bridge and pick up another backdoored pallet of web-fluid ingredients.

“But again?” He pulls the mask up, steps back through the door and kisses her.

“Yes,” she says, “yes, again.”

It's pouring, nearly freezing rain, and he pulls the mask back down and strolls out into it like it's the balmiest day.

“Do I look like shit?” Sheila asks, handing her the grocery list. “I feel like I look like shit. I'm only thinking about it because somehow you look like a million bucks. Are you seeing somebody? You  _ are.  _ Oh my God. May! Oh my God, May, tell me everything.”

“I have to go get these,” May says, waving the list. “I'll come back and tell you about it while we put 'em away.” Sheila deserves the full story—maybe not the “superhero from another dimension” part, but the spicy details won't compromise anyone's safety. Sheila's life with her mother is an unending grind, and gossip won't pay for a wheelchair lift or an extra day with the home health aide, but it might lighten the load in other ways.

“At least tell me where you met him! One of those bums from Tinder actually came through?”

“He's a friend from work.”

Sheila stares at her. “May, you don't have a  _ job. _ ”

_ Ms. Parker's Home for Lost Arachnids,  _ May thinks, and she's still not a giggler, but she smiles to herself.

“I'm gonna tell them this week,” Miles says a couple days later, frowning through the magnifying lens instead of at her. Apparently Tatiana came through with the components, and he's trying for an audio pickup that will fit inside an earbud. May is breaking her no-food-in-the-shed rule and eating grapes, which were cheap again this week.

“Oh,” she says, keeping her voice neutral. “Well, good, that's good.”

He touches the tips of two wires with the microsolderer. “I figure, I tell my dad first, he'll lecture me for like six hours, and then he'll go say it all again to my mom, and then she'll come in and probably say something about how yes they raised me to act on my principles but am I sure this is the way. So that's probably the move, 'cause then I can say yes and we can get somewhere. If I tell her first she's just gonna make me tell my dad anyway before I do anything else.”

“So it's a time-saving device.”

“No, it's a scare-saving device. I'm scared.”

They don't hug as a rule, the two of them, but she looks at him until he looks back. “It's the right move,” she says. “I was glad when Peter told me. Well. Not glad  _ when.  _ But glad  _ that. _ ”

“You're not them though. They do a lot to try to keep me safe. They think I don't know how much. And some of it they're wrong about, but, you know.”

“The time is gonna come when you'll be glad you told them and they'll be glad they know. How's that sound?” And, she says to herself, at least this way I won't be the only adult in his life who knows. There'll be other people, other anchor points.

“Sounds like a grammar quiz question.” But he's relaxed a little.

“What _do_ your parents think you're doing when you're over here? I mean, what do they think you're doing right now?”

He looks up from the guts of the earbud, across the workbench. “Community service credit,” he says with a straight face. “Spending time with senior citizens.”

“ _ Hey,”  _ she says, and flips a grape at him. He grins,  _ thwips _ out a short strand of web, and catches it.

 


End file.
